Wisconsin leaps toward marriage equality: Our View

Legal right still unavailable for some same-sex couples, but state's direction is clear.

Jun. 10, 2014

Natalie, left, and Heather Starr, with their daughter Libby, say their vows in front of Rev. Roger Bertschausen on the steps of the Outagamie County administration building on Monday in Appleton. / Wm.Glasheen/Gannett Wisconsin Media

We are in a messy moment of uncertainty in Wisconsin right now, with county clerks struggling to respond to different interpretations of federal district Judge Barbara Crabb’s ruling Friday overturning the state’s constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage. Crabb’s ruling itself created the problem, as she chose not to issue an injunction — that is, instructions about what officials should do in the wake of her judgment.

The immediate issue is a patchwork of counties issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, and others that have chosen to wait. Here in central Wisconsin, gay couples can legally marry in Lincoln, Wood and Clark counties but not in Marathon or Portage counties.

This is not the fault of the clerks, who have received conflicting guidelines. But it is an intolerable situation, and the state will need a single determination of its policy, and soon.

Part of a national movement

But if the status of same-sex marriage is at an uncertain moment right now, few people doubt that Wisconsin and the nation are on a course toward full legal recognition.

“I’m not overly upset there’s a delay” in Marathon County, Shannon Thomas, organizer of Wausau’s March for Equality event, told Daily Herald Media on Monday. “We’re happy that it happened and Wisconsin is moving forward.”

With Crabb’s ruling, Wisconsin became the latest in a long line of states where the marriage of same-sex couples has been allowed after a popular vote, by legislation or by the ruling of a judge. Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down that state’s ban in 2009. The Legislature of Illinois changed its law in 2013. In Minnesota, voters in 2012 rejected a Constitutional ban on gay marriage, and then the Legislature passed a law allowing it.

Public opinion on this issue shifted quickly and decisively, and so have state policies. Not many people doubt that the issue will be back before the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future — nor that the Court, then, will likely grant same-sex couples across the nation the right to marry.

A dizzying change

The speed with which this change has occurred is stunning. It is a testament to people’s power to effect change through the political process. It is an example of how possible it is for real social change to happen.

Though the policy is not yet settled in Wisconsin or in the nation, this is a special, joyful week for many couples, their families and their other supporters.

And let’s take two other lessons from the stories playing out in Wisconsin this week.

• Minds and laws can change. Twenty years ago no one, not gay rights activists and not opponents, would have imagined the course the issue would take. What issues of today that seem distant or intractable have the potential to be thoroughly remade in the next two decades? We should be humble, and hesitant to declare any change impossible.

• Be charitable to all. The speed of change on this issue is bound to be unsettling to some. Some people, especially those whose religious convictions lead them to oppose legal same-sex marriage, are feeling a sense of whiplash right now, and a sense of anxiety about where our course of social change will lead. Those concerns and that anxiety might be founded in beliefs that others would dismiss as intolerance, or worse, hatred. But not all opposition to same-sex marriage can be written off as bigotry, and all who have engaged in this debate should remember to be generous and charitable toward those who hold views different from their own. That is probably even more important as this particular debate nears a terminal point.

If gay marriage is not yet fully legal in all of Wisconsin, there is plenty of reason to believe it soon will be. We’re moving forward.